Hero
by KnightNight7203
Summary: "If I wasn't everything you think I am – everything I think I am – would you still want to help me?" In which Sherlock asks a lot of Molly, and then finally offers her something other than disapproval in return.


**Standard disclaimers apply. I own nothing but my computer, and even that is conditional.**

* * *

_"If I wasn't everything you think I am – everything _I _think I am – would you still want to help me?"_

_"What do you need?"_

* * *

Everything has changed now.

She has a boyfriend (distraction) whose main goal isn't the destruction of everyone she loves or the fall of the world as they know it (she hopes). She gets more work done – without the spontaneous demands for coffee runs and dead body exhibits, she can devote herself entirely to her actual job. The weather has turned dreary; the leaves are falling (drifting) from the trees, and she's always cold now.

Always lonely.

She leaves her lights on when she leaves her apartment. That way, it's almost as if there's someone (him) waiting for her when she gets back. She dreams that he'll visit. After all, he did turn to her when he had nowhere else to go before.

(Of course, now that he's appreciated and important and saving the world again, he'd never have to resort to such a poor choice. She feels this deep in her soul, where it chafes against her heart and leaves a burning hole.)

Except one day when she unlocks her door and steps inside, he's there.

They don't speak at first. She's too busy studying him, his too-pale face and too-thin frame, and he's probably too busy making himself appear as undamaged as possible. It's clear he's been through a lot – it doesn't take a pathologist to see that.

Then the silence gets to heavy and she gets too flustered and so she opens her mouth and fills it with small talk. She's not really sure what she's saying and she knows he'd prefer her to shut up, but she finds she doesn't care. She's a bit braver now. Or stupider. But either way, it's resulted in a stronger voice.

And then she decides to ask him a serious question.

"Are you through, then?"

"What?"

She wonders absently if she's that disjointed in his presence, that even his brilliant mind can't piece together the point of her ramblings. She decides it doesn't matter. _He_ came to _her_ this time, after all, not the other way around – if he didn't want her to speak at all, he should have stayed away.

She'll be damned if she's going to let him slip away again this time without at least getting a few things off her chest.

He's still waiting for her answer. He's never lacked in patience, exactly (except when it's effective for him) yet somehow, she's never seen him hold himself quite so (painfully) still. For once, she has his attention.

It must be nice to concentrate fully on one mundane thing, something small (simple) like her after so much uncertainty and fear. For even the great Sherlock Holmes must feel afraid when taking on an entire criminal network on his own. Surely he is not so immovable (invincible) that even that does not cut through his stony facade.

"You know. Saving the world. All that."

He gives a dark chuckle. It warms her heart to see his thin lips twitch upward in a smile, even if it is a shadowy, sarcastic one tinged with poison. She wonders if he knows just how bad he looks. When the last time he's eaten was. If he's slept indoors since he left.

"I'm not a hero, Molly Hooper. Not even close."

"Okay," she sighs, escaping to the kitchen where she won't be able to feel his eyes. They have dark circles under them, but pierce all the same.

The deeper signs of his trials appear gradually. She places a plate of hot food in front of him (her own dinner), and he doesn't eat more than a few mouthfuls (despite the fact that he's lost fifteen or twenty pounds in the past three months). He sits gingerly in the chair, his arms wrapped around his middle as though to protect himself from an unspoken danger lurking in the shadows. She catches the bruising around his neck (the only part of him that's exposed besides his face and hands) out of the corner of her eye and knows he's far more hurt (broken) than he's letting on.

But she doesn't know how to get him to let her help. It's taken her so much time to get this far, to earn this small amount of trust and acceptance.

She knows that a single word (glance) could set them both back to the beginning. (Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.)

So she helps him in only the small ways he will allow, placing her warmest blanket at the end of the sofa and leaving a cup of warm tea on the counter (though he never drinks it). And when she sends him back on his way the next morning, receiving not even a good-bye for her efforts, she tells herself he'll be back and tries (unsuccessfully) not to cry. She's convinced Sherlock Holmes is good for the world. But he's certainly not good for her.

* * *

Now he's a murderer.

Well, she supposes, he was already sort of one. And he's only ever killed criminals that deserved it, men that were tormenting the innocent with every breath that they stole through their unworthy lips. In her mind, Sherlock has been (and always will be) a hero. A kind of Robin Hood. Stealing life from the unworthy to give peace to those in need. That sort of thing.

The only difference is that now, he was caught pulling the trigger on the gun his brother never gave him permission (orders) to aim at someone else's head and fire.

High-functioning sociopath doesn't mean killer. It means more capable of seeing the best course of action than anyone (everyone) else, and the only one brave (stupid) enough to take it.

But _why_? (Oh, Sherlock.)

He's lucky the consequences weren't more severe.

She has every intention of telling him this (again) when he appears soundlessly over her shoulder at Bart's for the first time since the incident (when did she become so forward with him?). The expression on his face changes her mind.

He looks lost.

It's been weeks since she saw him. She didn't visit him after he was shot because the last thing she'd done prior to that was slap him (multiple times) and every time she'd start to flag a taxi, she'd think how that could have been the last exchange they ever had. She wasn't strong (brave) enough to face him with that knowledge weighing her down.

He's the one that doesn't look strong now.

"Sherlock?"

"Molly Hooper," he says, looking straight into her eyes, "I _know_ I am going to die this time." He certainly doesn't waste time on pleasantries. Any thoughts of a lecture are gone. It seems things are more serious than she dreamed.

She can't help it. She starts to cry. Again.

It seems all their meetings, even their last, are fated to end in her tears.

* * *

She can't function the day after the message is released on every screen in London.

He finds her crouched in her empty bathtub, wrapped up in a blanket and with her cat crushed to her chest. She'd heard the door and thought it was _him_, back from the dead to haunt her, to make her suffer, to pay for giving her prince wings and ruining the ending of his perfect fairy tale.

It's not _him_, though. It's Sherlock. Her hero.

She isn't sure if she wants to laugh or cry when she sees him, so she chokes instead.

"You don't look dead," she tells him seriously. She works with dead bodies all the time. She would know. He has the pallor, the thinness, the horrible oppressive silence. But she sees past the stillness in his eyes and feels the emotion there, the intensity. No, Sherlock is very much alive, as much as he ever has been.

He smiles gently. He must pity her, then. "I suppose not."

"Is he coming?" She regrets the morbid turn this conversation is taking, but she has to know.

"I don't know," he admits. She can see it's hard for him to say, that he isn't sure about something. It's hard for her to hear.

She so desperately wants for him to keep her safe.

"He doesn't know you had anything to do with it," he promises.

She snorts. "He knows almost as much as you do. I dated him. I know he does. And he's going to find me, and he's going to kill me."

Again, Sherlock seems to be at a loss for words. He does instead what he does best – deduces. It's painfully easy for him – the assortment of kitchen knives and frying pans scattered around her paint a clear picture of her panicked desperation to do _something_ to stave off the inevitable arrival of her worst nightmare. The fall of her own that she knows is coming as surely as she knows Sherlock Holmes is brilliant.

"You're coming with me," he tells her. There's no room for debate.

"Where?" she asks, wondering if he wants to protect her from Moriarty or from herself. Or both. Her eyes are surprisingly dry this time. She's not sure why she finds her own impending doom less disturbing than his, but she thinks that maybe, it's not healthy.

"Baker Street."

She'd like to say she tries to convince him that's unnecessary, that she'll be fine on her own. In reality, she jumps up so fast she almost trips over the edge of the tub, and when he places one cool hand on her arm to steady her, she feels the tears starting to gather. Only this time, they're tears of relief.

It looks like he might be her hero after all.

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**Much love,  
KnightNight7203**


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